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This is a happy story of Pisay alumni paying forward.

It is always interesting to bump into Jonathan De Luzuriaga. These days he calls himself the Chief Instigator at Spring Valley. I prefer to call him the Chief Chaos Monkey of Spring Valley.

The CCM of Spring Valley

Jonathan recounts that he had been searching the archipelago high and low for that one place where technology and innovation can prosper. As serendipity would have it, he was invited to speak at an ICT-BPM Roadshow in late 2015 in Roxas City in the beautiful island of Panay. As he was sampling the sumptuous seafood, Pueblo de Panay (where the event venue was located) caught Jonathan’s eagle eyes.

Pueblo de Panay, a 500 hectare mixed use township development, is right smack in the middle of the country. There is considerable development in progress but not at a point where injecting urban planning was too late. A convention center, a mall, several hotels and restaurants were present and the land development (roads and bridges) was already in full swing. Could this be the technology mecca that he had been in quest of for two years now?

Jonathan visited the place once more in early 2016 and noticed the upkeep of the venue was very strong. Unlike in the rest of the country where entropy tended to the maximum, there was a strong sense of order in the place. There was another hotel being built and several IT-BPM locators were already interested. Our curious swashbuckler discovered that all of these developments were being funded by just one family-owned organization.

Without skipping a beat, he met with the organization’s leadership and pushed for molding Pueblo de Panay as the Philippines’ answer to Silicon Valley. As it turned out, Jose Nery “Bub” Ong and Victoria Hariette Ong-Banzon – both Philippine Science High School or Pisay alumni – loved the idea. It was a chance for the Pisay-educated siblings to pay forward.

Assembling IT luminaries (Photo credit: Warner Brothers)

Moving like the Road Runner in that Warner Brothers cartoon, Jonathan sought out the IT industry movers and shakers and soon enough he had convened an impressive assemblage: Karrie Ilagan and Joel Garcia of Microsoft, Angel Redoble of the Philippine Institute of Cyber Security Professionals, Winston Cruz of the PSIA, Alvin Juban of the Game Development of the Philippines, Arup Maity of Spring.ph and BlastAsia, Joey Gurango of Proxor and Gurango Software, Jay Fajardo of Proud Cloud, Launchgarage and Medifi, Earl Valencia formerly of Ideaspace and the ubiquitous Don Felbaum of the American Chamber of Commerce.

Thou shalt break rules and dream

How did Jonathan achieve so much in so little time? I guess everybody loves an audacious idea. Spring Valley’s avowed goal is to become the melting pot of all the talented technology experts and innovators in the (Asia) region in order to design, develop and deploy game-changing creations and inventions that will help make this world a better place – Asia Pacific’s answer to Silicon Valley! Jonathan explains the appeal of Spring Valley further, “The mantra of the place is ‘Tech for Good’. Hence, when we educate and upgrade ‘citizens’ of Spring Valley. We also put special emphasis on the values formation. My favorite statement is – If I teach you how to break into the IT security system of the Pentagon, I also want to teach you that IT IS NOT OKAY to break into the IT security system of the Pentagon.”

“Instead of thinking of Silicon Valley as this exceptional place, think of it as a result of the world’s biggest experiment—people running away from the rest of the world, strangers with diverse experience and talent give rise to a body of culture and invisible rules and tribes of trust.”

Frederick E. Allen quoting venture capitalist Victor W. Hwang

Many cities have tried to be the next Silicon Valley and have failed miserably. Yes, it is important to have a good location but as Victor Hwang declares it is more important to build a tribe of trust, where like-minded people share ideas and not flash NDAs at each other. Jonathan’s parting words to me in our conversation is that he has high hopes that the rest (of Spring Valley’s story) will be history. Or will it?

Before I end, let me explain why I call Jonathan the Chief Chaos Monkey for Spring Valley. The reference comes from a book written by Antonio Garcia Martinez entitled – what else? – Chaos Monkeys. In the book Martinez describes a chimpanzee rampaging through a data center as an analogy for daring technology entrepreneurs disrupting society’s hallowed institutions and practices through an explosion of innovation. Not everyone will like the aftermath but the disruption is all but inevitable. It seems Jonathan is leading the charge for our little corner of the world.

I find it amusing and eminently apropos that Spring Valley has chosen a local monkey species as the mascot for the company.

I will tackle Jonathan’s high hopes for disruption in a succeeding blog. In the meantime, I am interested in hearing from the readers what they think of Jonathan’s (and Bub’s and Hariette’s) audacity.